


Refuge

by Too_Many_Seeds



Series: Motherhood (Pregnant Deputy ) [3]
Category: Far Cry 5
Genre: F/M, Kidnapping, Pregnancy, Some dark themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 09:48:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17201237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Too_Many_Seeds/pseuds/Too_Many_Seeds
Summary: A surprise ambush leaves Rook in the hands of her greatest enemy while in one of her most vulnerable conditions.





	Refuge

**Author's Note:**

> Please note that I am relying on Joseph's past from the Book of Joseph rather than his in-game retelling of his wife/daughter. So in this fic, his wife and daughter don't exist (as they aren't mentioned at all in the book).  
> This is just for the sake of trying to avoid any strong sinister undertones towards Rook's unborn child - I wanted to try and keep this fic a little bit less heavier than that; the underlying theme for this series has relied on the knowledge that Rook's child would be safe, and I want that to be the same here. 
> 
> Warnings: Some underlying mild dark themes.

It was just supposed to be a routine mission to Dutch. Drop in, hand over some supplies to last him and any guests for a little while longer and be on the way back.

The roadblock took her by surprise, to say the least. She’d barely rounded the corner before she’d had to swerve to avoid a collision with the nearest truck, and from there, the cultists had nabbed her with embarrassing ease. A Bliss bullet and she was out, dreading another drug-fueled high with Faith.

Rook did not expect to wake up at the compound. She came to slowly, rousing with the increasing awareness of an ache in her neck. Her eyes opened, and she winced at the sudden glare of light filtering through the nearby window; weak and golden tinted enough to make her guess it was late afternoon.

She gulped, grimacing that her throat felt coarse as sandpaper, and began to sit up; placing a hand below her to support the movement. She was sitting on a pew in a very familiar church, and her stomach dropped as she caught sight of the back of a man she knew all too well.

Joseph Seed was kneeling below the altar, body calm and relaxed and not at all like he was harbouring a vicious woman who had torn through the county and all that he had worked to achieve.

Rook glanced down, eyeing her abdomen carefully and her free hand came up to caress the area; prodding around the skin and checking tentatively for any marks. There was a moment of relief when she felt nothing to indicate that she and her plus one had taken any damage and she allowed herself to focus more at the moment at hand.

“Awake?” He asked, making her jolt.

She resisted the urge to roll her eyes at his dramatics.

“If you knew I was awake, you could have said something,” Rook muttered, setting her feet on the ground. She jolted, glancing down and realising that she was barefoot; her boots and socks nowhere to be seen. Thankfully, none of her other clothing had been taken. “But I guess you can’t resist being dramatic.”

He gave a small chuckle, the sound soft in the hushed room, before turning to face her. He gestured to her side, and she followed the motion to see a platter of food and a drink of water on the pew. Her stomach took that moment to make itself known, and she struggled to remember the last time she’d eaten - possibly that half-sandwich in the morning, if she was thinking correctly.

“Eat,” Joseph said, seeing her covetous glance towards the food. “Gather your strength.” He paused for a moment, giving her a careful stare; eyes narrowing slightly in focus. “You are eating for two, after all.”

She stiffened, her hand instinctively moving to her stomach and confirming his words. Her eyes narrowed, glaring at him as she shuffled backwards into the pew; perhaps out of a hope that the faded and chipped wood behind her would engulf her and take her away from him.

“And how the fuck would you know that?” Rook asked, voice low and tinted with that damning hint of wrath that seemed to seep into everything she touched nowadays.

“I’d ask that you mind your tongue in a house of God,” he replied, the slightest trace of sharpness to his tone, but it softened in an instant and he gave her a strange half-smile. “Would you believe me if I told you that I foresaw it?”

“No,” Rook replied instantly.

He laughed, the sound pleasant in the echoing church.

“I don’t blame you,” Joseph said, and his jeans made a scuffing sound against the ground as he rose into a standing position. He stared down at her, returned to his usual height. “When I was younger, I remember crowding around my mother on her rocking chair where she would sit aimlessly throughout the day... And I would press my head against her stomach - listening - tricking myself into thinking I could hear the gentle little _thumping_ heartbeat of my younger brother.” He paused, returning to the present with a knowing glance at her midsection. “I know what a pregnant woman’s stomach feels like.”

She didn’t move, toes still pressed against the cold floor, a skittish animal ready to pounce or flee.

“And why were you getting that comfortable with me at all?” She asked, resisting the urge to cross her arms across her chest. Lord knew her breasts were heavy enough and weighing her down with tenderness and could do with a bit more support than her lackluster sports bra was offering.

He didn’t show a hint of shame.

“Suspicion,” he admitted, taking a step closer towards her until he sat at her side, a plate of food and a cup of water the only thing separating them. “When my men found you, they said you were covering your stomach... _Protecting_ something.” Joseph smiled, the expression wry on a usually serious face. “One need not hear the voice of God to put those pieces together, I think.”

She didn’t smile back; the situation was not nearly so amusing to her, it seemed.

“So what now?” Rook couldn’t help one of her hands dropping to her abdomen, and felt a thrill of panic rush through her - it had been a common feeling throughout the past few months as she’d stomped her way through the multitudes of cultists. Now that she was in their hands, she couldn’t even begin to predict how they’d treat her. Or her child. “You gonna kill me?” _Kill us?_

She remembered the story that Jess had recounted to her, that of her own torture and her parents’ murder at the hands of the Cook. Would that be her fate as well? Tossed to the wolves- physically, that is - or worse? Was she not their harbinger of doom; foretold by Joseph and the apparent voice of his god to be the one who would break the seals and let loose a devastating collapse upon the world?

What mercy would an Antichrist warrant?

He hummed, the sound soft and musical in the way that his melodic voice was able to easily achieve.

“I do not think that would be necessary,” he said honestly. “I am the Father, and the Father forgives.” He met her eyes and smiled, warm and impossibly calm despite being less than a meter away from the woman who had once tried to arrest him and had since been laying waste to his project. “Your unborn child commits no sin by mere existence; they will have my love as any member of my family does.”

Her eyebrow twitched at that, and she distracted herself from her desire to snap something harmful and vicious back at him. She picked up the cup of water and brought it to her mouth, staring down at it and sniffing it. Figuring that he wouldn’t be one to poison her when he was so intent on _speaking_ with her, she took a sip and winced as the cool water soothed the sandpaper roughness at the back of her throat.

Placing the cup back down, she took a breath and composed herself.

“But my child isn’t a part of your family,” Rook finally replied to him, back straight and voice calm. “And neither am I.”

He acknowledged her words with a tilt to his head, but he didn’t seem to be particularly bothered by them.

“You will be,” Joseph said simply, and she thought that he genuinely believed it; this wasn’t a man who used confidence to boost his self-esteem, this was a man who had absolute faith.

There was something strangely terrifying about it.

“Then we’re at a stalemate,” Rook shrugged, projecting a sort of confidence that she did not truly feel. “You want us in your family, and it’s not gonna happen.” She glanced over her shoulder towards the front doors of the church; the lighting in the building making everything softer and more comforting than the terror she’d felt on that first night of this chaos. “You could just let us go.”

He sighed, and shook his head.

“No, I cannot,” Joseph spoke softly, and when he looked at her, she didn’t see any malice but rather genuine pity in his eyes. “Perhaps it is selfish... but I could not bear to condemn a mother and her child to the fires of the Collapse.” He paused, focusing briefly on his calloused hands clasped over his knees. “No. That is not what He intends.”

 _Awfully convenient your god’s intentions just happen to line up with your own_ , she thought bitterly, but for once contained her wrath and kept her mouth shut. His words were giving her a strong sense of foreboding, and she felt like she was on a precipice of his decision; this was not a wise time to be antagonising him. Not when her and her unborn child’s treatment was on the line.

Joseph stood, inhaling deeply as he crossed the small distance to stand in front of her. He reached out with his tough-skinned hands and cupped underneath her jaw, tilting her head upwards to face him fully with the beads of his rosary brushing against her collarbone, cold and jarring.

“I will save you,” he murmured, thumb brushing ever-so-gently against her cheek. “You will be spared from the fires of the Collapse. And your child will be born in a new Eden.” The smile returned, meant to be reassuring, and for one of his own it might have been. “You will bear the fruits of our paradise.”

She jerked away from him, pushing away from his touch with a scowl.

“I’m not a field to be reaped,” she snapped, eyes narrowed at him. “And my kid isn’t some... _prize_ for all the bullshit that’s been going on around here.”

He nodded, trying to appear somewhat contrite over his wording.

“Perhaps not,” he amended, and moved to pick up the plate of food left abandoned on the pew. “But your child - as any child - is a gift. As are you.” He moved to the front of her again, holding out the plate towards her in a strange sort of peace offering. “And you both will be cherished as such.”

She remembered a letter on the Rye’s porch that she had stumbled across, and frowned.

“So I’m being sent to John then?” Rook asked, gears in her heard whirring. A car trip meant another chance to escape but it also unfortunately meant that if she failed then her chances were much less favourable. “Gonna be locked away in some bunker until due date?”

She took a piece of dried fruit from the plate if only to make him put the damn thing down and stop making her uncomfortable. Her stomach was nearly rumbling from the desire to eat but her instincts were raging inside her to map out her current situation; to figure out every possible avenue for her to flee. She accepted the plate in her hands, resting it on her knees to placate him.

He softened, the tension in his muscles draining slightly now that she had begun to eat, and he slowly moved around her, placing his hand down on the armrest of the pew, standing to her side in the aisle.

“Usually that would have been the safest option,” he admitted, and gave her a careful and low glance. “But I fear you may not be well received among your fellow expectant mothers.” She frowned, wondering what made them so different to any other general cultist who would hate her for existing, and upon seeing her expression, he continued with a grim smile. “You’ve widowed many of them.”

“Oh.” She pursed her lips, unsure how she was supposed to respond. Of course the thought that the nameless cultists she’d shot down might have had families had crossed her mind, but the heat of battle was not the wisest place to dwell on such things. “I’m... sorry that I killed their husbands.”

 _I’m not sorry I defended myself and innocent people,_ she thought as well but held her tongue. It was not just her own safety on the line when it came to her playing nice and timid for the cult leader in front of her, and if she had to swallow her pride and temper herself and her sharpness, then so be it.

“I pity the children who will grow never knowing their father,” Joseph said, staring up at the bright Eden’s Gate cross above the altar.

“Yeah? Well, they’re not the only ones,” Rook replied, a trace of bitterness evident as she brushed a hand over the swell on her abdomen.

The night - only a week before this mess had begun - still gave her a sour taste in her mouth; the horror of her medication mix-ups, the accusations of unfaithfulness, the door slamming in the farmhouse hallway and that damn fucking text from his hotel room in Missoula. And yet, she’d never even considered a worse sort of chaos was lingering just around the corner.

Joseph was watching her now, softer and pitying in a way that made her stomach turn. She didn’t want pity, didn’t _need_ pity. Pity did fuck all for her and even less for her unborn child.

“You’re wrong, if it’s any consolation,” Joseph said, kneeling back down beside her legs; knees knocking against the wooden floor. He reached out and she resisted the urge to draw back as he placed a hand on her stomach, gentle as he cupped the swell. “Your child will grow knowing the love of a father, _the_ Father...and will never be bereft of it.”

There was something utterly terrifying about the earnest demeanour of Joseph Seed. He never approached anything half-heartedly, he never fed honey lies and he never made a promise that he wasn’t utterly certain that he could keep.

He said that he would love her child, and she believed him, even if she didn’t want to.

As it turned out, Joseph was right in that antagonising a cult meant that living in a bunker with them was going to be difficult. For her own safety and comfort, he set her up in a temporary building in his compound - _his_ building, as it conveniently turned out.

He did not actively try to convert her over the next few weeks; he did not sit her down and force her to clasp her hands in his own in prayer every day. In fact, he seemed rather suspiciously content to simply leave her be; to let her sleep in as much as her sore back bid her. He tolerated her mood swings - even that time when she’d tried to douse him with a jug full of water when she’d gotten pissed. The only thing he seemed adamant on denying her was freedom to roam outside the gates. He was right to do so, of course, because she’d be taking the first opportunity she could get to make a run for it, but there was an obvious lack of real freedom when one looked out the window to see guards armed with assault rifles. Waiting for her to just _try_.

Yet, contrary to her fear that he would insist on sharing a room, Joseph was even quite content to give her privacy, for which she was grateful.

As such, Rook had fallen into a rather… _domestic_ setting with the man. It might have been concerning, had there been any other options for her to choose from. When she felt capable, she washed the dishes, wiped down the table, even swept the floor one day when her back was giving her a break. She didn’t yet have access to knives or other easy weapons, and as such wasn’t able to busy herself with preparing a meal, so her afternoons were usually spent napping by the open window; calm and relaxed in the last place she should have ever felt so.

She wondered if Joseph was waiting for her to try something. He knew her, as she knew him, and she doubted he’d be fooled by a few weeks of model behaviour.

“Sin is insidious,” he’d told her one night over their dinner - some pot of stew one of the faithful had given to him as a gift - after he’d caught her eyeing the nearby window that overlooked the river. “It lurks under the skin; waiting and biding its time to emerge and taint the most innocent of souls.”

His expression had been unreadable, tilting his head to face her and she wondered if it was perhaps a preemptive sort of sadness that she was seeing; a sense that he regretted her own future escape attempts before they’d even come to pass. Did he fancy himself a modern Cassandra, proclaiming the future to deafened ears?

“Sounds like those souls need a better skin care routine,” was all Rook had replied, dry and likely flying right over his head.

His skin, after all, _was_ rather oily. Not that she’d tell him that, all she’d probably get was a lecture about vanity as a reward.

One Sunday, a few weeks after her arrival, he woke her with a knock to her bedroom door. She’d already been awake for half an hour or so, waking from the insistent pressure on her bladder - a-not-so-pleasant side effect of pregnancy that others had frustratingly neglected to mention - and mumbled out a reply.

It couldn’t have been more than seven in the morning, judging by the gloom outside the window, yet he entered her room and made his way to her bedside, kneeling down with a soft smile.

“Good morning,” Joseph greeted her, reaching out to brush a hand against the side of her cheek.

“Is it?” She grumbled with a scrunch of her face.

He chuckled at her antics, tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear so she could see him easier in the dulled light.

“We’ll see, won’t we?” He replied, dry and she wanted to sneer childishly at him in the pettiness that only an early wake-up could bring. He cleared his throat, before rising to sit by her side on the edge of the mattress. “I was wondering whether you might join me this morning. Come to my sermon.” He raised a hand, preemptively assuming her protests and continued. “It won’t be long; I know you need your rest so I won’t keep you.”

She narrowed her eyes.

“Why?” Rook asked, suspicious over the sudden change in routine. Routine was good, routine was predictable and kept her calm; she didn’t like it when he introduced new variables into the strange coexistence she’d been getting used to.

He clasped his hands and rested them on his knees, angling his upper body to face her. Despite the distance, she was still able to feel the warmth of him close by.

“Some of the flock have been...struggling to cope with our recent events,” Joseph replied, choosing his words carefully. “And while the upcoming years will not be easy or gentle for us, I had thought...well, I had thought that seeing you might...lift their spirits somewhat.” He paused, humming in that soft melodic way as he was wont to do. “For them to see a reminder of the future they’re fighting to preserve.”

Rook pursed her lips, biting back a scathing comment about fanatical cults and the brutality of his ‘righteous’ soldiers in this future of his. It would do her no good however, not in this.

“You want to use me as a prop?” She asked instead, raising an eyebrow at him.

He opened his mouth, perhaps to defend himself, but shut it slowly and inclined his head somewhat sheepishly.

“I...that is what it seems like, isn’t it?” He sighed, and rubbed at the bridge of his nose tiredly. “Forgive me; you are not a tool for the masses. I had...I had thought it might be inspiring for my flock to see something hopeful.”

A vicious part of her that sounded suspiciously like Mary May whispered that there was nothing particularly hopeful about a pregnant woman kept locked away by a fanatic, but despite herself and the wrath that had come to govern her, there was a tugging at her heart. Perhaps it was the hormones, perhaps it was her tiredness.

“Help me get dressed,” Rook muttered, pushing herself up with a groan. His hand flew to the small of her back, supporting her effortlessly as she rose. When her bare feet were flat on the ground and she was leaning on him for help as they made their way to her chest of draws by the wall, she pointed a stern finger up into his face. “And you’ll be reducing the amount of guards around the house.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but she was having none of it.

“Nope, no excuses,” Rook said firmly.

He sighed.

“For your safety”-

“ _No_ , you have countless guards around the compound; you can afford to lose a few here,” Rook interrupted, stern and putting her foot down for once. “I’m stressed enough as it is right now - you know, just over here growing another human being inside me - I _really_ don’t need the added pressure of a few dozen AR-Cs at the front door.”

She got the sense that he wanted to argue, but perhaps he was taking pity on her for today.

“I’ll...look into it,” Joseph promised in a weary voice and because Joseph did not mince his words, she knew that he was genuine.

“Okay.” Rook nodded and pulled herself from his grasp and support, leaning against her chest of drawers as she fumbled through her generous amounts of maternity wear that had been supplied by John. She chose a loose-fitting and modest navy blue dress that was presentable enough and - even better -  could hide the fact that she was still wearing her pajama pants underneath it.

She was still snickering over her ingenuity when she emerged from the room to join Joseph in the hallway - and she wondered whether the concerned glance he gave her was for her wellbeing or for her sanity. His hand had returned to the small of her back, guiding her through the compound as they walked.

He smiled warmly at every one of the flock that they passed, even though they seemed slightly unsure about her presence. She hardly blamed them; in all her time at the compound, she’d barely stepped foot outside her and Joseph’s home, not by any real imprisonment on Joseph’s part, but rather because she was sore and wanted to just fucking sleep most of the time.

Even this outing alone was likely to take a hit on her, and thankfully Joseph had mentioned that he would keep it short for her sake. To her relief, he kept that promise; running the sermon just long enough for her to long for her bed again.

It also had the added effect of the cultists being more comfortable around her, swarming to her and Joseph’s side once he had finished speaking. There were smiles all round that it was almost dizzying but she bore it surprisingly well despite her inclination towards needless wrath - which tended to manifest in these situations as the fondly dubbed “resting bitch face”.

It was when the aches of her condition made themselves known to her that she finally tugged on Joseph’s sleeve. Ever attentive, he leaned slightly towards her, letting her stand on tip toe to whisper in his ear her desire for the two of them to leave.  
“Can we go home?” She asked, weary and blinking long and heavy. He smiled in return, warm and frighteningly loving as he agreed.

And through the family’s gentle brushings on the swell of her stomach, the reverent “congratulations” and the anchoring hold of a hand against her back, she wondered just when she’d started to think of her and Joseph’s house as ‘home’.

The thought didn’t bother her as much as it probably should have.

**Author's Note:**

> Show me off too pls mojo jojo


End file.
